


Peggy Carter's a Helluva Dame

by belovedmuerto



Series: Keep You Like An Oath [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes learning to live again, Gen, M/M, Peggy Carter is Awesome, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, at least somewhat, but it'll get better!, except not, soulmates!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 12:24:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4100821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He thinks maybe he has a sweet tooth. Maybe he always did. He’ll have to ask-- Well, maybe eventually he’ll have to ask Steve about it.</em>
</p>
<p>Bucky visits Peggy, in search of answers, in search of himself. </p>
<p>Steve worries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peggy Carter's a Helluva Dame

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as usual, to Moonblossom for beta duties. Any remaining mistakes are probably on purpose.

He’s in the tub again.

He dreams. It’s different than before, when his memories were still rewriting themselves. This is not that. This is dreams; sometimes it’s nightmares. He has a hard time telling the difference, because they’re all terrifying in different ways. So perhaps they’re all nightmares.

He’s in the tub again, because he knows it’s almost time to leave here. He needs to move on, move forward, move somewhere. He’s been too long, too comfortable. It's too much like feeling safe, and he knows that safe is the last thing he is. 

Maybe, eventually. Maybe, if he can-- If Steve--

Maybe, eventually.

He dreams he's in an apartment. It's rundown, blurry around the edges. Not real. Not a real place. An amalgam. He thinks he recognizes pieces of it, from different places. Some from where he maybe grew up, with parents and sisters, like a real boy, some from where Steve grew up, with his mother. Some from the motel he’s in right now, some from that place he thinks maybe they’d shared for a little while, before he went off to war and everything went straight to hell, for seven decades or so. Some from Steve’s apartment in DC, the one he’d scoped out before Fury had gone there, as part of the mission.

He still has a mission; he remembers that even in sleep. It’s a different mission than before, but the target is still the same. The target is still the Captain. It’s still Steve, but it’s not a kill order anymore. 

There's a hole in the wall, in the apartment that isn’t a real place, gaping, and he knows he put it there, with his gun.

There's a hole in the wall, in the apartment that isn’t a real place, and it oozes blood, dripping down the wall and pooling on the floor. Viscous. Clotted. Deep, vital red, going brown around the edges. 

He knows all too well what clotting blood looks like. He flinches at the sight of it, and he doesn’t know why. He tries to look away from it, but his eyes keep going back to it.

The mission-- the Captain-- Steve stands before him, and he is only able to tear his eyes away from the blood to look at him. Steve flickers, in and out, like he's a picture, not quite in focus, the reel running out and spooling, clacking. Steve isn’t really there, but he’s there in the dream, and he wants to reach out to him, he wants to go to him but he thinks that’s dangerous. He thinks he shouldn’t do that. He thinks he’s not ready for that. He thinks it’s not safe. 

Steve is small, hunched, hair in his face. Staring at him with wide bright eyes. Crying. He doesn't know why Steve is crying but it hurts. It hurts like his own hurt, like the ache in his chest. It makes him want to reach out, but he’s certain that’s dangerous, that he will break Steve if he touches him. 

Steve flickers, one moment a small man, staring at him, imploring, crying, one moment large and yet-- Still staring at him, still imploring, and he can feel it in his chest, the way Steve is desperate to find him, and it scares him, that desperation. It scares him because he is just as desperate, to go to Steve, even though he will break Steve if he touches him. Steve doesn’t speak in either iteration, large or small, just stares at him, a question in his eyes, pain in his eyes, beating at him, battering him around the edges, battering him with hope and desperation and something that he thinks he remembers feeling before, when he was real. Something that he thinks might be love.

Steve flickers, and his hands are covered in blood, held out in supplication, in question, and he knows he did this, made this man bleed. He didn’t even touch Steve and he is breaking him.

Making him bleed still.

There is a shining silver thing running between them, even when he turns away from the pain in the mission’s eyes, the pain and the unbearable hope in his eyes. He can feel it, tugging at him, pulling him towards Steve, towards where he’s afraid to go.

He wakes up in the tub in his motel room, panting, sweating, tears on his face.

“Fuck,” he mutters. 

It’s time to go. Go where, he’s not sure, but it’s time to go.

\----

Steve dreams of falling. Always, falling. Falling and cold; the bone-deep ache of freezing.

He dreams of Bucky falling from the train, his cry echoing off the mountains, in his head, and he dreams that he lets go and falls with him. He should have done that. He should’ve let go and gone after Bucky. If Bucky survived the fall, Steve certainly would have. He would’ve found Bucky. If they’d been taken, it would’ve been together.

He dreams that Bucky didn’t fall; instead, Bucky is on the Valkyrie with him, and they go into the water together.

He dreams that they are wrapped around each other when they hit the water, and it’s a comforting thought, even though it didn’t happen. At least they would’ve been together.

But they weren’t, and he dreams of falling, always falling. Falling together, falling apart, but always falling.

Steve wakes up with tears on his face. He takes a deep, shaky breath, and lets it out slowly, blinking at the darkness. He orients himself slowly, _I’m at Sam’s. I’m in his spare room. I’m on his uncomfortable futon. What the fuck is a futon, anyway?_

He sits up and wipes his face. It’s too early to be up, but he’s not going to sleep anymore. After a few minutes, sitting on the bed and breathing, breathing, breathing, he gets up and wanders out to the kitchen, gets himself a glass of water. 

It feels like Bucky is right there with him, at his side, even though he’s not. Bucky is nowhere near him; Steve has no idea where he is. It’s driving him crazy, the inactivity of waiting, the worry, the desperation.

But Bucky is closer, somehow. He can’t really explain it, even to himself. It just feels like he’s closer.

Steve doesn’t dare hope. It’s too dangerous. But he’s been getting a sense of how Bucky is more and more often, the last couple of days. Sometimes he’s sure that’s what it is, that Bucky is letting him know he’s, if not okay, then at least surviving. Sometimes he’s certain he’s imagining things, and that Bucky has fled far from DC, never to be found again.

He doesn’t know if it’s a good thing, that he thinks he can feel how Bucky is. Might be the exact opposite. It might be what sends Bucky far, far away. He doesn’t know. He can’t know, until something changes, and it terrifies him. 

After he drinks his water, Steve goes and grabs his sketchbook and pencils, and sits on the couch under the light of a single lamp and lets his mind wander while he doodles.

\----

He checks out of the motel, says goodbye to Marc (turns out the kid has a name, who knew?) and leaves. For several hours, he simply drives, further west before turning around and heading east again. He goes through Baltimore, and down through Annapolis, and across the Chesapeake Bay to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. 

He makes a small detour to raid another safe-house that’s near Ocean City; one he’d only recently remembered. 

There are a lot of guns.

Not so much when he’s done and the house is on fire. He leaves his sniper rifle behind, even though it pains him to do so. He’s been a while with no run-ins with HYDRA though, and he has plenty of other weaponry, easier to conceal and that he’s just as comfortable with. He’ll make do for now. It wouldn’t be good for him to caught with a fuck-off sniper rifle along with the fuck-off arm. One is bad enough, and he doesn’t really have the option of leaving the arm behind.

He drives through the night back to Baltimore, stopping at a 24 hour diner for food. It feels familiar, cheap coffee and breakfast food served all night. The pie is pretty fantastic, though, and as long as he keeps drinking coffee, they don’t ask him to leave, or really pay him any mind at all. 

He thinks maybe he has a sweet tooth. Maybe he always did. He’ll have to ask-- Well, maybe eventually he’ll have to ask Steve about it.

He feels like Steve is at his side, almost all the time. It’s distracting at best, and debilitating more and more often. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know. 

And afternoon’s sojourn in the library and a Staples is enough to get him credible ID, just something simple to tide him over, keep him under the radar, and he heads to the train station in Baltimore, where he wipes down and leaves the car in a parking lot across the tracks.

He boards the last MARC train of the evening heading into Washington, DC with not much more than a book and a backpack with what few clothes he has, his computer, guns and money, and a bag of almost stale donuts from the Dunkin’ Donuts in the station. 

He reads while he’s on the train, though he doesn’t really take in much of the story, and when the train pulls in at Union Station he gets off with the rest of the passengers. Despite the lateness of the hour, there are a lot of people in the station. He gets on the Metro headed towards Shady Grove for a few stops, and gets off in what he estimates is a fairly tourist heavy area of the city. 

He finds a hotel, upscale but not too much so, and takes a room. For just a couple of days.

Now that he’s back in the city, he’s pretty sure he knows what he’s going to do. And then he’ll head out again. 

There was a mention, in the file he was given, after the bridge but before the helicarriers (he thinks; he only vaguely remembers the bridge, only vaguely remembers “who the hell is Bucky?”, but he knows that Steve remembers it. He knows that Steve will remember for him. If he goes back to Steve. When he goes back to Steve) of a woman. An elderly woman that Steve visits regularly.

It’s a risk, but he needs to go see Peggy Carter.

She will have answers for him, he’s sure of it.

First, though, he will check on Steve.

\----

Sam wanders out of his bedroom a few hours later, yawning and shuffling. He grunts at Steve as he goes past, and Steve makes a noise of acknowledgement in return. A few moments later he smells coffee starting to brew, and Sam shuffles out of the kitchen and collapses on the couch next to him, still yawning, his eyes only half open.

“Run this morning?” Sam mumbles.

Steve looks at him. “Have I or do I want to?”

Sam shrugs. “Both.”

Steve smiles a little. “No, and yes.”

“‘Kay. Coffee first.”

“Sure, Sam.”

They sit in comfortable silence waiting for the coffee to finish; the only sound is that of Steve’s pencil against the paper. He looks down at what he’s drawing, what he’s been drawing for a while now, and isn’t surprised to find that it’s Bucky, the look of dawning horror in his face that Steve remembers from the helicarrier.

He puts his pencil down.

It’s a nice distraction, going for a long run with Sam (well, his run is longer than Sam’s, as per usual). Sam gets just as aggravated as always, when Steve runs past him and flicks him on the ear, or calls “on your left”. It makes Steve laugh, and he’s glad for it, for a little bit of levity. He needs that. He doesn’t feel light, lately. He feels like the whole world is on his shoulders, and the only thing he cares about in it is avoiding him.

“I was thinking about going back to my place this afternoon,” Steve says, as casual as he can make it, as they’re walking the last few blocks back to Sam’s place from the Metro.

“How long’s it been?” Sam replies. Not that he doesn’t know. He’s well aware of Steve’s fretting and pining.

“Um, a couple days.”

“Maybe wait a day or two longer then, man. Don’t want to scare him off, right?”

Steve shrugs. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I don’t even know if he’s in town or not. He’s probably in China by now, or something.”

“There’s that positive attitude Captain America’s known for.”

Steve shrugs and looks down. “‘M’not Captain America.”

“Yeah, I know.”

\----

He scopes out the Captain’s apartment from the Thai place across the street for a few hours, eating his fill of Pad Thai while he watches. People go in and out, but none of them are the Captain, and none of them are any of his known close associates, as far as he can tell. And most importantly, none of them appear to be HYDRA or SHIELD agents; not even the one who lived there, tasked with keeping an eye on the Captain while he was home.

The proprietor of the restaurant keeps bringing him refills of his iced coffee concoction, babbling at him in Thai. When he’s not paying attention, he understands every word, although he’s pretty sure his responses are in English, and not in kind. He makes the little old lady smile and laugh, though, and she keeps bringing him more noodles and more coffee. Something about him needing to be fed up, he thinks.

He’s not arguing, though. The food is tasty, and the coffee is spicy and cold and sweet. He asks what makes it so sweet, and she tells him it’s the condensed milk, and he thanks her. 

Steve would love this, he thinks. He wonders if Steve has been here, since it’s right across the street from where he lives (lived?). He doesn’t ask, though. That would be far too conspicuous, asking if Captain America eats here.

He picks up on his tail when he’s ducking down the little side street to find a way to the roof. It doesn’t feel like a malevolent tail, but he can’t be sure. He doesn’t let on that he’s aware, he goes about his business, watching the apartment from the roof across the street. The roof from which he’d shot Nick Fury.

He knows he did that; there are images of it in his head, of the sound of glass breaking when the Captain had come after him. The way catching the shield had jolted, made him feel something. That he remembers, that feeling, the surprise, but he doesn’t remember actually shooting Fury. 

Not that it took, apparently, and he’s strangely glad for that. Not another name to add to the list of ghosts in his head, at least.

Eventually, he goes into the apartment.

There are things waiting for him; a note, some clothes, money, food.

Even though he’s spent the whole afternoon eating noodles, he eats one of the sandwiches in the fridge anyway. He packs away the rest of them to take with him; food is always useful. 

He reads the note, tracing his fingers over the words that Steve had written.

To him. To Bucky.

He doesn’t feel like Bucky. He doesn’t feel like James Buchanan Barnes, even though when he thinks about it he knows he must be. He wouldn’t be Steve’s if he wasn’t Bucky. Steve wouldn’t be his if he weren’t Bucky. There wouldn’t be that thing, between them, that silver thing he remembers dreaming about.

He leaves the note and goes back into the kitchen. He needs to be away from it for a few minutes, from the way it makes him feel, trapped and free all at once, sad and angry and confused. 

He does the dishes that are in the sink. Steve was always terrible about doing dishes. There’s even a machine for doing the dishes for him, and yet they’re still in the sink.

Washing them brings him a moment of… quiet. Of peace, he’s tempted to think.

But there’s no peace for him, not yet. No time soon, he thinks. 

After the dishes are done, he goes back to the duffle bag of things Steve had left for him. It makes him feel… something. He’s not sure what. Comforted, perhaps. Like he’s been thought of, which is nice even though he knows that Steve probably thinks of him a lot, if the way it pings through him sometimes is any indication. 

If the way he has a sense that Steve worries about him is any indication, Steve does almost nothing but worry about him.

He doesn’t know how to reassure Steve. He doesn’t know why he wants to, but he does. 

He settles for ripping the doodle away from the rest of the note. He finds a pencil and draws a line between the doodled versions of the two of them. He tries to make it like he remembers, with the inadequateness of the graphite line, giving it little glow lines. 

He draws a little thought bubble above his own head, and writes “Punk” in it.

He doesn’t know what any of it really means, just that it feels right. He attaches the doodle to the fridge with the little magnet of Steve’s big-ass target of a shield, and he leaves the way he came, out the window and up to the roof, across to the other building, carrying the duffle over his shoulder.

The redhead is waiting for him, on the other side of the roof, snapping gum and looking bored as hell.

He knows that’s a lie. 

Here’s his tail. He’s not sure he was right about the lack of malevolence.

She nods at him, showing her hands, empty. Not that this means she’s unarmed, because he knows full well she’s at least as armed as he is (three knives, two guns, a garotte) (he knows she carries a garotte because she’s used it on him before). He approaches with caution, stopping about halfway across the roof, and she replies in kind, stopping a few feet in front of him, her hands still visible.

He sticks his left hand in his pocket, and she tenses momentarily, before forcibly relaxing, the tension appearing to drain from her shoulders, and she grins at him, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. 

She’s good, he’ll give her that. Very well trained. He guesses she has at least as much weaponry on her as he does.

“Hey,” she says, after a moment, and it’s all purr, all flirty-coyness, and he only barely refrains from growling at her in response.

“Steve’ll be pissed if I don’t at least ask you if you’re okay,” she adds, with a shrug, dropping the flirtiness.

He glares. “I’m _fine_. He worries too much.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “He worries about those he loves.”

He does growl at her this time, and she takes a step back, hands up. It does nothing to reassure him that she’s not a danger, because she is dangerous and they both know he knows it as well as she does.

“What do you want?” he asks, when she still doesn’t leave, or move any further.

She shrugs. “I guess I’m just checking in. He’s a friend. I don’t have many of those. It makes me protective.”

He can feel himself bristling at her. Steve is _his_ , he would never be a danger to Steve. Not now. Not now that he’s _aware_. Not now that his mission is _his_ again. 

She watches him, seemingly unconcerned with him. She snaps her gum again and shrugs. “We’re cool, Barnes. Watch out for yourself. Give Steve a break sooner rather than later, yanno?”

She grins at him again, brushes past him and goes off the other side of the roof.

He stands there for a long time, trying to calm himself.

\----

He makes it two more days before he can’t wait any longer. He has to be doing something, anything to feel like he’s looking for Bucky. Something. Anything.

Sam offers to go with him, back to his apartment to see if Bucky had been there, but Steve declines. He walks the whole way, to give himself time to prepare. To prepare for the chance that Bucky hasn’t stopped by, that Bucky is not as close as it feels like he is. To prepare for the chance that Bucky has stopped by. That he is that close, and he just isn’t ready to see Steve yet.

The dishes he’d left in the sink are in the drying rack, clean.

The things he’d left for Bucky are gone, except for the corner of the page he’d written his note on. The corner with the doodle. Bucky’s added to it, a little line connecting the two of them, and a little thought bubble above doodle-Bucky’s head.

_Punk._

Steve stands in his kitchen and quietly breaks down, holding the doodle tight in his hand, shoulder shaking with the force of his sobs. He doesn’t know how long he stands there, trying to catch his breath, trying to calm himself, with tears coursing over his cheeks, dripping off his chin, his nose running, sniffling and trying not to make any noise.

Eventually, he recovers enough to put the scrap of paper down on the counter, and splash some water on his face. He takes a deep breath, and another, ignoring the way they shake into and out of his lungs. Carefully, he tucks the scrap into his pocket

_This is a good thing_ , he tells himself. _He’s remembering. He knows me. He knows us._

He keeps telling himself it’s a good thing the entire walk back to Sam’s place.

Natasha and Sam are sitting on Sam’s patio drinking beers and laughing together when Steve gets back. Steve hasn’t seen Natasha since the cemetery, when she’d given him Bucky’s file. She’s been more than a little pre-occupied with the Senate hearings, but now they’re wrapping up, he’s pretty sure she’s going to disappear for a while.

He’ll miss her.

She sobers when she sees him, and nods at the seat next to her. Sam turns around and sees him, and he sobers, too.

Steve sits next to her, and she puts her hand on his arm, briefly. She looks at him closely for a minute, and then takes a sip of her beer.

“You all right?” she asks.

Steve starts to nod, starts to insist that he is, and then stops. He shakes his head, dispelling the impulse. 

“Not really,” he answers instead. He chuckles, mirthlessly.

Sam goes into the house and comes back a minute later with another beer, which he hands wordlessly to Steve. He appreciates the gesture, even if the beer won’t do anything for him except feel bubbly on the way down. 

When they’re all seated again, he takes the scrap of paper out of his pocket and puts it on the table. Natasha is the one to reach out and grab it, looking at it and then passing it to Sam.

“Bucky did this?” Sam asks, after a moment.

Steve nods. He stares at the beer bottle in his hands, picks at its label. “Well, I did most of it. He just added to it.”

He doesn’t look up, but he suspects Sam and Nat are exchanging loaded, speaking looks.

“I saw him,” Natasha says, after a moment.

Steve does look up at her at that, fast.

She shrugs at him. “He was staking out your place. I kept an eye on him for a while.”

For a minute, Steve can only gape at her, speechless. 

She doesn’t blanche under his gaze, she simply waits until he can speak.

“How is he?” Steve asks, voice barely a whisper.

“He seems okay,” she allows. “He was clean, he didn’t smell. He wasn’t displaying any outward signs of being insane.”

Steve blinks at her, and she shrugs. 

“I think he’s just trying to get his head on straight,” she adds. “I know the feeling. So you do, I think.”

Steve nods. “That’s good. I think. That’s good, right?”

Natasha nods. “If he was going to go on a killing spree he’d probably have done it by now.”

Somehow, that’s almost comforting.

\----

He calls ahead of time, because it’s only polite. He has myriad holes in his memory still; it sort of feels like his memory is more holes than actual substance but he remembers enough to know that Peggy Carter was always a proper lady, worthy of utmost respect.

She also had a killer right hook. Equally worthy of utmost respect.

The nurse on the phone sounds delighted when he says he’s her nephew, coming to visit while he’s in town, and she seems charmed by his faked accent. She promises to let Ms. Carter know that she’ll have a visitor, and she lets him know that she’s been having a good day, a string of good days, and he probably shouldn’t wait much longer, in case the streak breaks.

So he goes. 

Nerves crowd his stomach as he walks into the nursing home where she lives. He knows that Steve comes to visit her regularly. He wonders if she’ll remember him. 

If she’ll hate him.

He doesn’t know. He can’t. 

Peggy is out of bed, when he’s escorted into her room, seated in an armchair by the window, a book open in her lap. 

“Ms. Carter, your nephew is here to see you,” the nurse says, before leaving them alone.

Peggy looks up at him, and smiles a little bit, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. They’re so sad that all the words he’d meant to open with leave him, and he just stares at her. She stares right back at him, and eventually she holds her hand out, gesturing to him.

He moves jerkily, crossing the room, and gives her his left hand without thought, completely forgetting that it’s not his.

She holds it for a moment, and then nods at the chair across from her. “Sit down before you fall down, James.”

He obeys. “Pegs,” he says, croaks really.

She scowls at him. “That damn nickname.”

He finds a smile, something he thinks used to belong to him, used to be at home on his face and in his eyes, and he eyes her up and down. “You still got great stems, doll.”

Peggy Carter laughs at him, full-throated and vibrant, the way he remembers her laughing at his dumb jokes, at Steve’s earnest ones, at Dum Dum’s dirty jokes, at all their jokes really. She always had a great sense of humor, once she decided she trusted you enough to let her guard down. She was like Steve, like that.

He remembers Peggy Carter. 

She quiets and her eyes go sad again. “James, I’m sorry.”

He shrugs it off. “For what? You did none of this.” He gestures at himself. He’s almost positive he’d remember if she’d had a part in his undoing and remaking (and all those subsequent undoings and remakings).

“Not directly,” she replies, and she doesn’t flinch from what she perceives as her responsibility. Peggy Carter never did back down, not from anything. “I was complicit, though. I never should’ve signed off on Paperclip. I should’ve paid more attention. I’m so sorry for what they did to you, for what I allowed to grow within my own organization.”

“Pegs,” he starts, and then stops. He takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. “Thank you.”

She nods. “I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, James--”

“This isn’t why I came to see you, Pegs. There’s nothing to forgive between us, except maybe that we both let him down.”

She stops, and looks at him closely. “I’m sorry for that too. Once you were gone, there was nothing I could do, nothing I could say to keep him from what he thought he needed to do. I wasn’t you; I never could be.”

He looks at his hands, one flesh, one metal, and almost finds a smile. “No one could ever make Steve do something he didn’t want to do. Or not do something he felt he needed to do.”

She reaches across the space between them, and he lets her take his left hand again. She keeps grabbing the metal one, as though it’s not different, as though it’s his, and for those few snatched moments he feels like it is. 

“Why did you come?” she asks, and he looks up at her, shrugging.

“Tell me?” she adds, after a moment.

He takes a deep breath. “I thought you’d have answers.”

“Answers to what, James?”

He shrugs again. It seems silly now. Now that he’s here, now that she’s looking at him like she’s known him all her life. “Who I am? What I’m supposed to do now?”

“Oh, James,” she sighs. Her gaze is unnerving, but she is still holding his hand. “They truly did a number on you, didn’t they?”

He nods. “You have no idea.”

“Nor do I want one; what I can imagine is bad enough. I’m an old lady now, James. I can plead a weak heart if need be.”

He smiles. “That works.”

She nods. “Good. Very well. You are James Buchanan Barnes. You are a good man to whom awful things were done for a very long time, but now you are free of it. You can be whomsoever you please now, but I expect you will wish to be Steve Rogers’s once again, if I am correct?”

He shrugs. “I don’t want to hurt him again. I almost killed him.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “And then you dragged him out of the river and made sure he was found.”

He shrugs again. 

“Your choices are your own now, James. But I think you should choose Steve; you’ll break his heart otherwise. You’re soulmates, it’ll only ache forever if you don’t at least see him.”

“You’re more blunt than I remember,” he grouses, tugging his hand free of hers, gently.

“No, I’m just an old lady and see no use in beating around the bush anymore.”

He takes a deep breath. Bucky takes a deep breath, trying the thought on, of himself as _him_ , as Bucky Barnes. Steve Rogers’s soulmate and best friend.

“Tell me about you,” he says, looking up at her. Bucky says it, a hint of his old charm in his voice, on his face.

She smiles at him, seemingly fully aware of what he’s doing. “I’ve had a good life, James. I had my Angie; we weren’t like you and Steve always were. We both married and had children, and we lived practically in each others’ houses for years upon years. My son and her daughter are soulmates too; they gave us a passel of grandchildren. I had my work, and she hers. I’ve had a good, long life. I’m only sad that you two weren’t around to see it.”

“Weren’t like me an’ Steve how?”

“Oh, there’s a word for it these days, but I can never remember it,” Peggy says, waving it away. “We weren’t platonic, but we were never quite romantic, either.”

He looks at her, and she looks back at him. 

“I always knew, you know,” she adds.

He swallows. 

“I think most of the Howlies did. Maybe not Dum Dum, he could be oblivious sometimes.” She shrugs.

“Knew what?” Bucky asks.

“That you were soulmates,” she explains. “That you were it for each other. I only ever wondered how you managed to keep your hands off each other, honestly.” She shrugs again, and he feels his face color.

“We never--”

She raises an eyebrow, and it’s his turn to shrug, ducking his head. “It was too dangerous, I think?”

“Oh. Well, that’s a shame, James. You should definitely go find Steve then, and perhaps kiss him senseless.”

She laughs at the expression on his face, when he jerks his head up to look at her. 

“The world is a different place these days, James. You two could even get married, if you’d like. If you do, I expect an invitation. And if I can manage it I’d like to walk Steve down the aisle.”

Bucky grins for a moment. “He’d make a swell bride.”

They both laugh, and for a moment the intervening seventy years, while he’d been a brainwashed assassin and she’d lived her life missing the people who’d gone before her, are gone, and they could be in camp again, sharing a stolen bottle of awful hooch and telling stories. They’d always gotten along exceedingly well; there had always been an understanding between them.

“I never forgot either of you,” Peggy says, softer now. 

He thinks maybe she’s getting worn out, all this remembered emotion, his desperation for answers.

“I wish I could say the same,” he replies.

“Ah, well. You’ll not forget me now, will you?”

“No, Pegs. I won’t.”

“You’ll come see me again sometime, won’t you?”

“Of course, Pegs.”

“Good. Where are you headed now, if not straight to Steve’s door?”

“I don’t think I’m quite there, yet.”

She gazes at him steadily. “No, perhaps not yet. Soon, though, I should think. You shouldn’t be apart, James.”

He sighs. He knows she’s right, but he’s afraid.

“Steve isn’t someone you should fear, James.”

She always was a mind reader.

“I think I might go to New York.”

She smiles at him. “I’ll let him know when I see him.”

He glares at her, and she just smiles at him, serene, as her eyes drift shut. Bucky leans over and kisses her cheek before leaving her to nap.

\----

Steve wakes up slower than usual, confused and disoriented. He sits up slowly, looking around the room, taking in where he is and _why_ he’s there. He’s still at Sam’s, in his spare room. It’s later than he usually sleeps, by a few hours at least. That’s probably why he feels so groggy, so much like he’s still asleep and dreaming.

Everything is a little fuzzy around the edges, and he’s absolutely certain there’s somewhere he’s supposed to be. Somewhere he’s supposed to go.

Steve drags himself to standing with a low groan, stretches, and shuffles down the hall to the living room.

He collapses onto the couch next to Sam, already feeling exhausted from just those few feet, from just the act of walking down the hall.

Sam is on his laptop, doing something or other. He’s still wearing his running gear, but his sneakers are on the floor and his socked feet are propped up on his coffee table. He glances over at Steve and passes over his half full mug of coffee.

A fortifying gulp of too-sweet, lukewarm coffee only does a little bit to jolt Steve back to reality, and he grimaces as he hands the mug back.

“Nightmares?” Sam asks as he takes his drink back and takes another gulp. It doesn’t seem to bother him at all.

“Was I shouting? Sorry,” Steve says. He rubs his face with his hands. He’ll have to do something to wake himself up soon, but he’s not sure what. Maybe a frigid shower would do the trick.

“Just once. I thought about trying to wake you up, but my luck would be that you get violent when someone tries to wake you up from a nightmare.”

Steve maybe blushes a little. “Uh, yeah, not a good idea I don’t think? I always used to come up swinging, and that was before the serum, so. Uh, yeah.”

“Yeah, I don’t want my nose broken in the middle of the night. Or my face.” Sam smiles at him, like this isn’t an unusual thing. 

“Maybe try just calling my name or something?”

“Sure man, I’ll give that a whirl the next time.”

Steve nods. They sit quietly for a few minutes, Sam tapping away on his laptop; he’s probably checking his work email or something like that.

“I think I need to go to New York,” Steve says, as it dawns on him slowly that this is the thing he’s feeling, a conviction that he has to go _home_ , to New York. To Brooklyn, possibly, but definitely to New York. 

“Yeah?” Sam looks at him. “What brings this on?”

Steve shrugs. “I dunno, I just woke up and-- I feel like I need to go to New York.”

“You think Bucky is headed that way?”

He shrugs again. “Maybe? I don’t know why else I’d be feeling like this.”

“Well, that’s probably good, right? That you can get a sense of him like this.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Steve sighs. “I don’t know why he won’t just talk to me.”

Sam smiles at him, sympathetic. “Give him time, Steve. Dude’s been through the wringer, you gotta let him recover on his own terms, at his own pace.”

“I know, I know.” Steve stands up. “I’m gonna go shower.”

“You going to see Peggy today?”

“Yeah, I have to let her know I won’t be by for a while.”

\----

The nurses are always kind to him, when he comes to visit Peggy. They give him updates on how she’s been doing, and warn him if it’s going to be a bad day. She forgets, sometimes. 

“Her nephew was here the other day,” the nurse is saying, as she leads him down the hall to Peggy’s room. “She was so happy to see him, but I think something about his visit made her sad, too. She’s been looking at her photo albums again, but I’m sure seeing you will cheer her right up, Captain.”

“Her nephew?” Steve echoes, faintly. Peggy doesn’t have any nephews, as far as he knows. None that come to visit, anyway. Her only local relative is Sharon.

The nurse doesn’t seem to hear him, though, because she doesn’t explain further, and then they’re at Peggy’s door, and she takes her leave so he can go in alone.

“Hi, Peggy,” he says with a smile, as he crosses the room to press a kiss to her cheek, and take his normal seat at her side.

“Steve,” she says, smiling at him. “You’ve had a rough couple of weeks, haven’t you?”

“You heard?” He grimaces. He doesn’t want her to worry about him. He doesn’t want her to be upset over what had happened to SHIELD.

She gives him a look, one he remembers quite well. “I have a telly, Steve. And newspapers. I’m old, I’m not daft.”

“Sorry,” he says, leaning back. 

“How are you, my dear?”

“I’m okay. It’s been… rough.”

She looks at him, steadily, for a moment, before she nods, allowing him his little untruths. She won’t push for him to confess everything to her, but then, she probably doesn’t really need him to. She always could read him like a book. 

“For what it’s worth,” Peggy says, after a moment. She reaches out, and Steve takes her hand. “I’m sorry for my part in it. I’m sorry I let it happen.”

“You didn’t know, Peg. You couldn’t.”

“I was willfully blind, in my later years as Director, Steve. I signed off on things I never should have allowed to happen. I have my regrets. And I’m sorry you got caught up in them.”

“Peggy, no.”

She waves him off. “I’ve made my peace with it, Steve. I’ve asked for forgiveness where I can. And I think it’s time for you to make your own peace.”

Steve nods. “I think--”

She gives him a shrewd look. “James was here, the other day.”

Steve gapes at her. “He-- What?”

“He came to see me. I thought for a moment perhaps that he was here to kill me, which only would’ve been what I deserve, but he just-- I think he wanted clarity. I don’t think I was able to help him, much, but it was nice to see him, and see him doing alright.”

“Bucky was here?” Steve whispers.

She lets go of his hand, to pat him on the cheek. “He seems to be doing well, Steve. He’s taking care of himself, relearning himself. Give him time, and he’ll come to you.”

Steve shuts his eyes against the wave of emotion sweeping through him. Bucky was here. Bucky came to see Peggy. He doesn’t know what it means, but it makes the aching in his chest throb. It makes him hurt, how much he misses Bucky.

“He said he’s going to New York,” Peggy adds, her own voice soft. “You should go. Maybe you can find each other there.”

Steve nods, jerkily, and lifts his head. He doesn’t care if she can see the tears in his eyes. “That’s what I came to tell you; that I need to go to New York for a little while.”

She smiles at him. “Good. Go. Find your soulmate. Be happy together. Give him my love when you find him.”

Steve nods again, unable to speak around the lump in his throat. But Peggy understands; she always has. She always had his number, and he always loved her for it.

\----

He checks out of his hotel early in the morning, when the streets are still quiet, the district not quite awake and moving yet. He walks to the Metro station and rides the few stops to Union Station.

Bucky buys himself a train ticket and gets on the train headed for New York’s Penn Station.


End file.
